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From oneb!cs.ubc.ca!uw-beaver!news.tek.com!uunet!techbook!dgannon Mon Apr 5 11:12:55 PDT 1993
>From _The Journal of Historical Review_, Vol. 13, Number 2 (Mar./Apr. '93):
French Court Orders Heavy Penalties Against
Faurisson for Holocaust Views
New French Legal Assault Against Revisionists
and Freedom of Speech
On December 9, 1992, the Paris Court of Appeal (Eleventh Department)
rejected Professor Robert Faurisson's appeal of an April 1991 conviction on
a charge of "contesting the crimes against humanity" because of remarks
against the Holocaust story he made in a magazine interview.
The appeal court imposed penalties of 187,000 francs (nearly $40,000 at
current exchange rates) on EACH of the two defendants in the case: Dr.
Faurisson and magazine publisher Patrice Boizeau. Each was ordered to pay
30,000 francs in fines, and 157,000 francs in "damages" to eleven
Jewish-Zionist and other organizations. In addition, each must, of course,
bear the legal costs of his defense.
In the interview, published in the September 1990 issue of _Le Choc du
Mois_ ("The Shock of the Month"), the French professor commented on the
extraordinary Fabius-Gayssot law of July 1990 that expressly forbids
"contesting the crimes against humanity" as defined by the victors of the
Second World War and punished by the International Military Tribunal at
Nuremberg. In practice, this law applies only to those who call into
question alleged crimes against Jews, and particularly persons who contest
the orthodox Holocaust extermination story.
Sometimes referred to as the "Lex Faurissonia," this law was enacted to
criminalize, above all, the work of Dr. Faurisson -- Europe's leading
Revisionist scholar and a good friend of the IHR.
In his 1990 _Le Choc du Mois_ interview, Faurisson had stated that he
would continue, regardless of the recently-promulgated law, to proclaim the
results of his research:
* There was no German order or plan to exterminate the Jews of Europe.
* No homicidal gas chambers ever existed in the concentration camps of
the Third Reich. The supposed extermination gas chambers, as
described by alleged eyewitnesses and perpetrators, could not have
existed for physical, topographical, and architectural reasons.
* The familiar figure of six million Jewish victims is absurd.
In April 1991, a Paris criminal court ordered Faurisson to pay a penalty
of 250,000 francs (of which 100,000 was suspended), and the publisher of
_Le Choc de Mois_ to pay a penalty of 180,000 francs. (See the _IHR
Newsletter_, May 1991, pp. 1-2, and May 1992, pp. 2-3.)
In the December 1992 decision, the three-judge appeal court (Francoise
Simon presiding) imposed a total penalty of 374,000 francs on the two
defendants, none of which was suspended. Throughout Faurisson's entire
testimony, which lasted nearly two hours, Judge Simon ostentatiously
averted her gaze from him. She also forbade Faurisson from reading
documents, including a portion of the verdict of the Nuremberg Tribunal
(the ostensible basis for the law in question).
But that's not the worst of it. In addition to the fines totalling
nearly $80,000 in this single case (not to mention their considerable legal
expenses), Faurisson and the magazine face two NEW cases based on the same
1990 interview. As Faurisson has ruefully explained, it's as if someone
accused of having stolen a bicycle were to stand trial three times: first
for the theft of the bike, then for stealing the wheels, and finally for
taking the handle bars. This sort of double and triple jeopardy is
normally rejected by French jurisprudence no less than it is in America:
but because it involves the most sacred icon of our age, the legal
situation is anything but normal.
Finally, on January 12, Faurisson received a summons for yet another
trial. He is being sued because of a fragment of a sentence in a review by
him published in the weekly _Rivarol_, April 10, 1992.
Not surprisingly, French newspapers and television have generally
ignored or minimized the appeal court's December decision against Faurisson
and the magazine.
Faurisson has decided not to appeal the December decision to a higher
tribunal, citing the cost of such an appeal because he believes that even
should his conviction be overturned he would likely be re-tried on the same
charges (and incur further legal expenses), to obtain a verdict that would
probably be no different from the first.
At the same time, though, Faurisson remains steadfast in his
determination to carry on the fight for the historical truth about the
alleged gas chambers, and for the freedom to write and speak that truth in
France.
An expression of this continued dedication -- and of the growth of
Holocaust Revisionism -- is a rather lengthy and remarkably fair interview
with Faurisson published November 11 in the Italian daily _Corriere della
Sera_. In his replies to the paper's respectful questions, the French
scholar provided a clear and concise summary of the Revisionist view.
"Worse than Stalinist Law"
The Paris court's December ruling is of historic significance. For the
first time a university professor has been EXPRESSLY punished by a judicial
body for having made public his research on a subject on which it is
EXPRESSLY forbidden by law to contest the official version.
Over the centuries thousands of professors and other scholars have
suffered terribly for having affronted the ruling orthodoxy with their
findings. It is to be noted, however, that until now such men and women
have been punished on indirect and hypocritical legal grounds. They have
been accused, for instance, of attacking religious faith, of endangering
the national interest or of undermining a political ideology. Sometimes --
as has also been the case with Faurisson -- they have been condemned for
"defaming" this or that person or group, for "inciting to racial hatred,"
or for causing "personal damage." In the late 1940s, for example, French
professor Maurice Bardeche was thrown into prison on the pretext that he
"apologized for [Nazi] crimes."
In Germany, which does not have a SPECIFIC law against Revisionism,
courts have punished Revisionists on the basis of a law that makes it a
crime to "defame the memory of the dead."
France's Fabius-Gayssot law is free of any such hypocrisy. With perfect
cynicism, the "Lex Faurissonia" establishes historiographical dogma. Not
even Stalin ever proclaimed a comparable law. When, for instance, the
Soviet dictator persecuted the opponents of a quack biologist Lysenko (who
was also a member of the Soviet commission that "established" that the
Germans killed four million people at Auschwitz), it was not in the name of
a specific Soviet law declaring Lysenko's theories to be correct, nor was
there ever such a Soviet law. The Fabius-Gayssot law is not Stalinist: it
is worse.
Other Victims
Professor Faurisson is not the only victim of the legal campaign in
France against Holocaust Revisionists. (See also the _IHR Newsletter),
July-August 1992, pp. 5-6.) Among other recent cases involving such
dangerous "thought criminals" have been:
-- In February 1992, a Paris court of appeal ordered Francois Brigneau and
Roland Gaucher to pay a fine of 76,000 francs ($15,200) for having
published in a weekly periodical a 60-word statement by Faurisson in 1980
refuting the Holocaust gas chamber and extermination story.
-- In April 1992, the appeals court in Caen (Normandy) upheld convictions
against Vincent Reynouard, a 23-year-old chemical engineer, and Remi
Pontier, a computer science engineer, for distributing leaflets and
stickers that question the existence of extermination gas chambers in Third
Reich concentration camps. Reynouard and Pontier thus became the first
persons to be convicted under the Fabius-Gayssot law.
-- In June 1992, a court in Nice convicted two young men for having put
stickers on a secondary school building that read "Faurisson is right: Gas
chambers = rubbish." Fabrice Robert, a 20-year-old university history
student, was ordered to pay a fine of 10,000 francs ($2,000), and Pierre
Gauzere, a 26-year-old automobile worker, was fined 20,000 francs ($4,000).
Each defendant was also ordered to pay a total of 10,000 francs to four
organizations. Finally, the "civic rights" of the two young men were
suspended for five years. (Among other things, this means that neither can
hold any government job, including teacher or post office employee, or work
in any government-affiliated agency or business.) This case is being
appealed.
-- In April 1992, Philippe Costa, a 31-year-old engineer, and Laurent
Gentel, a 24-year-old law student, appeared in a court in Fontainebleau
(near Paris) for having distributed a leaflet advertising audio cassettes
of a presentation by Faurisson on the gas chamber issue. The judge in the
case declared that no one would be permitted even to mention the words "gas
chamber" during the trial, which meant that the defendants could not
explain their reasons for distributing the leaflet. They have been ordered
to pay penalties of 29,000 francs. The verdict is being appealed.
-- In mid-December, a court in Amiens ordered Revisionist publisher and
writer Pierre Guillaume, and the periodical _Nationalisme et Republique_,
to pay 103,000 francs for publishing a very cautiously worded article about
the Holocaust issue. In addition, Guillaume has been ordered to pay 58,000
francs for having published a translation of an "open letter" by IHR editor
Mark Weber (reprinted from the Summer 1988 _Journal_). Guillaume faces a
third trial for having published copies of an article by Pierre Marais, a
retired auto technician. Marais himself faces two trials: one for this
article and another for a technical study he wrote.
-- Bernard Notin, a professor of economics at a university in Lyon, has
faced numerous difficulties in recent years for mentioning, in passing, in
an article that the gas chamber story is not clear. As a result of
pressure from Jewish Zionist organizations, and in particular the group
headed by Serge Klarsfeld, he was relieved of his teaching duties.
Although it was recently decided to permit him to resume teaching, it is
not clear if this will actually happen. When he was asked during a
television interview if he is a Revisionist, he replied: "I will not answer
because I do not want to give vile little magistrates the opportunity to
assassinate me."
[Photograph captioned, "Dr. Robert Faurisson addresses the Tenth IHR
Conference, 1990.]
Jewish-Zionist groups are upset that persons charged under the
Fabius-Gayssot law have been able to articulately explain in court
precisely why they reject the Holocaust extermination story.
Accordingly, an attorney and spokesman for the virulently
anti-Revisionist "International League Against Racism and Anti-Semitism"
(LICRA) recently proposed a revision of the law that would forbid a
defendant in a Fabius-Gayssot case from explaining his Revisionist views in
court, or even from repeating in court the "offending" statement.
So goes it for Revisionists iin "douce France" ("sweet, gentle France").
In Austria, Switzerland, Belgium, Italy and Sweden laws similar to the
Fabius-Gayssot law are in effect: a troubling portent of the "new Europe."
Media Hypocrisy
France's Fabius-Gayssot law, and similar legal measures in other
countries, would be universally condemned as intolerable restrictions of
free speech and academic expression if they involved any issue other than
the Holocaust.
Hardly a word about any of these latest French blows against civil
rights and free speech has appeared in the American media, which is
normally so quick to sniff out every real or imagined violation of civil
rights in China, Burma or South Africa.
Such laws and measures are not only chilling manifestations of the power
and bigotry of the international Holocaust lobby, they also strikingly
point up the bad faith and desperate fear of the lobby in the face of
steady Revisionist advances. Historical truth does not need laws to defend
itself.
___________________________________________________________________________
Faurisson Needs Our Help
In France -- as here in the United States -- our traditional enemies have
used litigation in their ongoing campaign to destroy Holocaust Revisionism.
Nowhere is the legal situation worse for Revisionists than in France, where
a special law allows private associations, individuals, and the state to
target men and women like our brave colleague, Robert Faurisson.
As Europe's leading Holocaust Revisionist scholar and activist, Dr.
Faurisson has been the target of judicial and criminal repression since
1979. He has suffered eight physical attacks, including the beating that
nearly killed him on September 16, 1989. Now Faurisson, who must support
himself and his wife from a single source of income (his now-reduced salary
as a professor), must bear the burden of court-ordered penalties (about
$37,000), as well as the costs of his legal defense in this and other cases
stemming from his commitment to finding and publicizing the historical
truth about the "gas chambers."
Rober Faurisson's fight is your fight. No less than our American
forefathers who signed this country's declaration of independent nationhood
in the summer of 1776, Faurisson has pledged his life, his fortune, and his
sacred honor so that your children and your children's children will live
free from the bane of an imposed pseudo-religion.
Once more, Robert Faurisson needs your support. Help brighten his
spring with your generous contributions for his legal expenses so that we
American Revisionists can say, in word and in deed, "Faurisson, we are
here!" (Note: French law does not permit individuals to assist in paying
fines.)
Please address your contributions for Professor Faurisson's legal
defense to:
Robert Faurisson
10, Rue de Normandie
03200 Vichy
France
[end of article]
[Reprinted by permission from _The Journal of Historical Review_, P.O. Box
1306, Torrance, CA 90505, USA. Subscription rate: $40 per year, domestic.
$50 per year, foreign.]
This article was manually transcribed by the System Operator of the
"Banished CPU" computer bulletin board system, which is located in Portland,
Oregon, U.S.A.
Banished CPU supports Freedom of Speech!
___________________________________________________________
| |
| For 300-9600 bps (3 lines w/V.32) call: (503) 232-5783 |
| For 14400 bps (2 lines w/V.32bis) call: (503) 232-6566 |
|___________________________________________________________|
Sysop: Maynard "the Main Nerd"
[end of file]
-Dan Gannon
--
dgannon@techbook.COM Public Access User --- Not affiliated with TECHbooks
From oneb!cs.ubc.ca!destroyer!sol.ctr.columbia.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!noc.near.net!uunet!techbook.com!techbook.com!not-for-mail Thu May 20 21:03:59 PDT 1993
Article: 14504 of alt.conspiracy
Xref: oneb alt.discrimination:6394 alt.conspiracy:14504 talk.politics.misc:79520 soc.misc:1133
Path: oneb!cs.ubc.ca!destroyer!sol.ctr.columbia.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!noc.near.net!uunet!techbook.com!techbook.com!not-for-mail
From: dgannon@techbook.techbook.com (Dan Gannon)
Newsgroups: alt.discrimination,alt.conspiracy,talk.politics.misc,soc.misc
Subject: No Gas Chambers at Auschwitz -- Defiant Historian's Fine Tripled!
Followup-To: soc.history
Date: 20 May 1993 16:42:28 -0700
Organization: TECHbooks - Public Access
Lines: 252
Message-ID: <1th514$hp4@techbook.techbook.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: techbook.techbook.com
Summary: 2 articles (newest one first)
>From _The Journal of Historical Review_, Vol. 13, Number 2 (Mar./Apr. '93):
Irving Conviction in Germany Upheld, Fine Tripled
Historian Ordered to Pay $18,000 for "Gas Chamber" Remarks
David Irving has been ordered by a German court to pay $30,000 marks (about
$18,000) for telling an audience that the "gas chamber" at Auschwitz shown
to hundreds of thousands of tourists annually is a phony postwar
reconstruction ("Attrappen").
On January 13 a Munich court rejected Irving's appeal of a 1992
conviction, and then tripled the original fine. Last May the best-selling
British historian was ordered to pay 10,000 marks (about $6,000) after a
lower court convicted him of remarks made at a Munich meeting in 1990.
(See the _IHR Newsletter_, July-August 1992, pp. 3-4.)
The appeals court judge in the January case -- like his counterpart in
the May trial -- rejected a bid by Irving's attorneys to introduce
documents, witnesses (including Auschwitz State Museum Curator Dr. Piper)
and other evidence showing that what the historian had said in the 1990
meeting is, in fact, the truth. The judge justified his refusal to permit
the defense to present its case by declaring that the wartime extermination
of the Jews has been sufficiently proved by historians.
Irving attorney Dr. Schaller said that he would appeal this "outrageous"
verdict to the highest possible level, even though he sees little prospect
for success. In spite of the new ruling, Irving defiantly repeated his
view outside the court building: "There were no gas chambers at Auschwitz.
I will not change my opinion."
[end of article]
[Reprinted by permission from _The Journal of Historical Review_, P.O. Box
1306, Torrance, CA 90505, USA. Subscription rate: $40 per year, domestic.
$50 per year, foreign.]
This article was manually transcribed by the System Operator of the
"Banished CPU" computer bulletin board system, which is located in Portland,
Oregon, U.S.A.
Banished CPU supports Freedom of Speech!
___________________________________________________________
| |
| For 300-9600 bps (3 lines w/V.32) call: (503) 232-5783 |
| For 14400 bps (2 lines w/V.32bis) call: (503) 232-6566 |
|___________________________________________________________|
Sysop: Maynard "the Main Nerd"
[end of article]
-------------next article follows-----------
>From the _IHR Newsletter_, July/August 1992 (Number 88):
Irving Fined $6,000 in German "Gas Chamber" Trial
Historian Defies Judge in Dramatic Case
British historian David Irving was fined 10,000 marks ($6,000) by
a German court May 5 for public statements denouncing stories of mass
exterminations of Jews in gas chambers at Auschwitz as a myth.
Munich district court judge Thomas Stelzner ruled that Irving was
guilty of "disparaging the memory of the dead," a crime in Germany that
effectively applies only to Jewish victims.
Stelzner rejected Irving's appeal against a previous fine of 7,000
marks ($4,300) for telling a Munich meeting in April 1990 that the
building in Auschwitz that has been portrayed for decades to tourists
as an extermination gas chamber is a phoney reconstruction
("Attrappen"), just like the one at Dachau. Judge Stelzner said that
he was increasing the fine because of Irving's defiant "lack of
understanding," and because he had earned money from the dissemination
of his Focal Point edition of the _Leuchter Report_.
During the hearing, Irving stood by his public statements,
maintaining that no Jews were gassed in Auschwitz.
Irving's attorneys, Dr. Klaus Goebel and Hajo Herrmann (a
decorated Second World War Luftwaffe colonel), called certified chemist
Germar Rudolf as an expert witness to prove that, "in fact, the
buildings in question at Auschwitz were never used as Zyklon B gas
chambers for killing people." An expert report by Rudolf establishes
that there are no measurable traces of ferro-ferric-cyanide (from
Zyklon) in the walls of the Auschwitz structures allegedly used as
homicidal gas chambers, whereas the walls of the camp's delousing gas
chambers have such traces in abundance.
Rudolf's report, which provides still more authoritative
confirmation of the 1988 findings of American gas chamber expert Fred
Leuchter, will be published in Germany in the next several months.
The judge seemed to be entirely satisfied with Rudolf's
qualifications as an expert. However, when Goebel began to ask the
witness about his on-site inspection of the Auschwitz "gas chamber"
structures, Judge Stelzner interrupted to forbid it.
Prosecuting attorney Kaps told the judge that Rudolf should not be
permitted to testify. His testimony would not be relevant, she argued,
because "it has now been established that the [Auschwitz] gas chambers
no longer exist, and that reconstructions have been build in their
place." (Nevertheless, Auschwitz tour guides continue to show off
structures that they claim are the original "gas chambers.")
When defense attorney Goebel asked Kaps to explain what she knew
about these "reconstructed" gas chambers, she replied: "I have
absolutely nothing to say." Goebel: "So, you simply make statements
for which you have no basis." Kaps: "I'm not saying anything." Judge:
"Madame prosecuting attorney is not required to say anything."
Irving's attorneys presented many additional arguments and made
further points to strengthen their argument that what Irving had said
at the 1990 meeting in Munich was, in fact, the truth.
In spite of all of this, the judge finally ruled that the
testimony of "the expert witness, certified chemist Rudolf, is
completely unsuitable as evidence" in this case.
When Goebel asked the judge to explain his ruling, Stelzner
stammered that Rudolf had not been questioned about his on-site
inspection of the structures. At this point, Goebel reminded the judge
that he had forbid precisely this line of questioning. Apparently
under tremendous pressure, Stelzner merely responded in a stammering
voice: "I, uh, can only confirm that the witness was not asked about
this."
Even though the judge confirmed that the decades-old claim that
the structures shown to tourists at Auschwitz are not the original "gas
chambers," he rejected every defense witness and exhibit because, he
said, the Auschwitz gas chambers have been historically proven.
If that's true, asked defense attorney Herrmann, what would anyone
have to lose by permitting Rudolf to testify? When the judge replied
that, "Uh, well, time would be lost. It would also be illegal,"
attorney Goebel pointed out that the law permits an expert witness to
testify. Goebel then went on:
I have the impression that this court has something to hide,
otherwise it would permit the expert witness to testify. I
understand that the prosecuting attorney and the court is under
political pressure. Nevertheless, the accused must be given the
opportunity to prove his statements. It is intolerable that in a
society of law that you [the judge] can prevent me from
questioning the expert witness about his on-site work, and then
reject him [as a witness] because he was not asked about this.
You are preventing any discussion of a matter of evidence.
When defense attorney Herrmann likewise emphasized that Stelzner
was free to permit all relevant evidence, the judge responded: "I
prefer not to . . . Yes, it may very well be that, from your point of
view, I am hindering the presentation of the defense case."
Dr. Franzisek Piper, director of the Auschwitz State Museum in
Poland, was similarly rejected as a defense witness by the judge and
the prosecuting attorney. Irving's attorneys intended to ask Piper,
under oath, to confirm that he had privately confided to Freiburg
historian Prof. Martin that the Auschwitz "gas chamber" shown to
tourists is actually a phony reconstruction.
Attorney Herrmann cited a statement written on January 8, 1979, by
former German Foreign Minister Genscher: "I am also aware that there
were no gas chambers in the Auschwitz camp." This statement cannot be
reconciled with the verdict in the Frankfurt "Auschwitz trial" of 1965,
Herrmann said. The judge responded by declaring: "This writing and the
Frankfurt Auschwitz verdict have nothing to do with this trial."
Goebel charged that the court was using wild and groundless
arguments in an effort to evade the defense team's scientific evidence.
Stelzner's declaration that extermination gassings of Jews at
Auschwitz is a "historically established fact" was greeted with
derisive laughter by Irving supporters in the courtroom.
Goebel and Herrmann resolved not to put up any longer with such
intolerable behavior. After declaring that they were now concluding
their case, the defense attorneys dramatically walked out of the court
room, to the sound of supportive applause from most of those in
attendance.
In a dramatic closing statment to the court, Irving defiantly
declared that this is a political trial, and that the verdict had been
decided long before it began.
He said that he had sent aerial reconnaissance photographs taken
of Auschwitz in 1944 to German historians, asking each one to please
show him where they believed the "gas chambers" were located. "But
each one of them declined," Irving said, adding that German historians
are liars and cowards.
"As a historian," he said, "I have a duty to bring out the truth.
As a judge, you have the same duty. All the same, it appears that in
Germany you have certain difficulties with that."
Irving has said that he will appeal the May 5 verdict, if need be
under the United Nations convention on human rights. Even though he is
a citizen of a fellow European Community country, Irving has officially
been banned from entering Germany. Nevertheless, he has visited
Germany dozens of times since the ban was issued.
In Italy, authorities prevented Irving from landing at the Rome
airport in mid-June because he was scheduled to address a meeting of
the Western Cultural Movement. In spite of the ban, and a violent
protest by Jewish demonstrators who threw stones and paint, about 300
mostly younger people met anyway at the hotel conference site.
Meanwhile, Jewish organizations in Britain are pressuring book
stores not to stock or sell the revised new edition of Irving's 850-
page master work, _Hitler's War_. (Available from the IHR for $49.95,
plus $4.00 shipping.)
Several bookstores have withdrawn the book in the wake of furious
protests and vandal attacks, although other dealers have declared that
they will not give in to threats and intimidation, and will continue to
carry the Revisionist work.
Irving is convinced that the tide of history is with the
Revisionists. "It is going to be a hot twelve months," he recently
told a reporter, "but at the end of it, the gas chamber legend will
have vanished once and for all."
Within two years, he told a meeting in Hamburg last November,
"this myth of mass murders of Jews in the death factories of Auschwitz,
Majdanek and Treblinka, etc., etc., which in fact never took place. . .
this horrific ghost of guilt from which the German people have suffered
for the last 45 years, will be laid to rest."
Irving, author of dozens of best-selling, acclaimed works of
twentieth-century history, will address the Eleventh IHR conference in
October.
[end of article]
-Dan Gannon
--
dgannon@techbook.COM Public Access User --- Not affiliated with TECHbooks
Public Access UNIX and Internet at (503) 220-0636 (1200/2400, N81)
From oneb!nntp.cs.ubc.ca!destroyer!gatech!howland.reston.ans.net!europa.eng.gtefsd.com!uunet!techbook.com!techbook.com!not-for-mail Mon Sep 20 23:22:51 PDT 1993
Article: 27606 of alt.activism
Xref: oneb soc.history:16614 alt.censorship:13086 alt.activism:27606 alt.revisionism:3907 alt.discrimination:8965 alt.conspiracy:19770 alt.politics.correct:5294 alt.journalism.criticism:723 talk.politics.misc:94040 talk.politics.mideast:34443
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From: dgannon@techbook.techbook.com (Dan Gannon)
Newsgroups: soc.history,alt.censorship,alt.activism,alt.revisionism,alt.discrimination,alt.conspiracy,alt.politics.correct,alt.journalism.criticism,talk.politics.misc,talk.politics.mideast
Subject: Renowned Historian Fined, and FINED MORE, for TELLING THE TRUTH!!
Date: 20 Sep 1993 13:16:28 -0700
Organization: TECHbooks - Public Access
Lines: 423
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Summary: Posted to help answer questions recently asked about this topic.
Three directly related articles follow:
___________________________________________________________________________
>From the _IHR Newsletter_, July/August 1992 (Number 88):
Irving Fined $6,000 in German "Gas Chamber" Trial
Historian Defies Judge in Dramatic Case
British historian David Irving was fined 10,000 marks ($6,000) by
a German court May 5 for public statements denouncing stories of mass
exterminations of Jews in gas chambers at Auschwitz as a myth.
Munich district court judge Thomas Stelzner ruled that Irving was
guilty of "disparaging the memory of the dead," a crime in Germany that
effectively applies only to Jewish victims.
Stelzner rejected Irving's appeal against a previous fine of 7,000
marks ($4,300) for telling a Munich meeting in April 1990 that the
building in Auschwitz that has been portrayed for decades to tourists
as an extermination gas chamber is a phoney reconstruction
("Attrappen"), just like the one at Dachau. Judge Stelzner said that
he was increasing the fine because of Irving's defiant "lack of
understanding," and because he had earned money from the dissemination
of his Focal Point edition of the _Leuchter Report_.
During the hearing, Irving stood by his public statements,
maintaining that no Jews were gassed in Auschwitz.
Irving's attorneys, Dr. Klaus Goebel and Hajo Herrmann (a
decorated Second World War Luftwaffe colonel), called certified chemist
Germar Rudolf as an expert witness to prove that, "in fact, the
buildings in question at Auschwitz were never used as Zyklon B gas
chambers for killing people." An expert report by Rudolf establishes
that there are no measurable traces of ferro-ferric-cyanide (from
Zyklon) in the walls of the Auschwitz structures allegedly used as
homicidal gas chambers, whereas the walls of the camp's delousing gas
chambers have such traces in abundance.
Rudolf's report, which provides still more authoritative
confirmation of the 1988 findings of American gas chamber expert Fred
Leuchter, will be published in Germany in the next several months.
The judge seemed to be entirely satisfied with Rudolf's
qualifications as an expert. However, when Goebel began to ask the
witness about his on-site inspection of the Auschwitz "gas chamber"
structures, Judge Stelzner interrupted to forbid it.
Prosecuting attorney Kaps told the judge that Rudolf should not be
permitted to testify. His testimony would not be relevant, she argued,
because "it has now been established that the [Auschwitz] gas chambers
no longer exist, and that reconstructions have been build in their
place." (Nevertheless, Auschwitz tour guides continue to show off
structures that they claim are the original "gas chambers.")
When defense attorney Goebel asked Kaps to explain what she knew
about these "reconstructed" gas chambers, she replied: "I have
absolutely nothing to say." Goebel: "So, you simply make statements
for which you have no basis." Kaps: "I'm not saying anything." Judge:
"Madame prosecuting attorney is not required to say anything."
Irving's attorneys presented many additional arguments and made
further points to strengthen their argument that what Irving had said
at the 1990 meeting in Munich was, in fact, the truth.
In spite of all of this, the judge finally ruled that the
testimony of "the expert witness, certified chemist Rudolf, is
completely unsuitable as evidence" in this case.
When Goebel asked the judge to explain his ruling, Stelzner
stammered that Rudolf had not been questioned about his on-site
inspection of the structures. At this point, Goebel reminded the judge
that he had forbid precisely this line of questioning. Apparently
under tremendous pressure, Stelzner merely responded in a stammering
voice: "I, uh, can only confirm that the witness was not asked about
this."
Even though the judge confirmed that the decades-old claim that
the structures shown to tourists at Auschwitz are not the original "gas
chambers," he rejected every defense witness and exhibit because, he
said, the Auschwitz gas chambers have been historically proven.
If that's true, asked defense attorney Herrmann, what would anyone
have to lose by permitting Rudolf to testify? When the judge replied
that, "Uh, well, time would be lost. It would also be illegal,"
attorney Goebel pointed out that the law permits an expert witness to
testify. Goebel then went on:
I have the impression that this court has something to hide,
otherwise it would permit the expert witness to testify. I
understand that the prosecuting attorney and the court is under
political pressure. Nevertheless, the accused must be given the
opportunity to prove his statements. It is intolerable that in a
society of law that you [the judge] can prevent me from
questioning the expert witness about his on-site work, and then
reject him [as a witness] because he was not asked about this.
You are preventing any discussion of a matter of evidence.
When defense attorney Herrmann likewise emphasized that Stelzner
was free to permit all relevant evidence, the judge responded: "I
prefer not to . . . Yes, it may very well be that, from your point of
view, I am hindering the presentation of the defense case."
Dr. Franzisek Piper, director of the Auschwitz State Museum in
Poland, was similarly rejected as a defense witness by the judge and
the prosecuting attorney. Irving's attorneys intended to ask Piper,
under oath, to confirm that he had privately confided to Freiburg
historian Prof. Martin that the Auschwitz "gas chamber" shown to
tourists is actually a phony reconstruction.
Attorney Herrmann cited a statement written on January 8, 1979, by
former German Foreign Minister Genscher: "I am also aware that there
were no gas chambers in the Auschwitz camp." This statement cannot be
reconciled with the verdict in the Frankfurt "Auschwitz trial" of 1965,
Herrmann said. The judge responded by declaring: "This writing and the
Frankfurt Auschwitz verdict have nothing to do with this trial."
Goebel charged that the court was using wild and groundless
arguments in an effort to evade the defense team's scientific evidence.
Stelzner's declaration that extermination gassings of Jews at
Auschwitz is a "historically established fact" was greeted with
derisive laughter by Irving supporters in the courtroom.
Goebel and Herrmann resolved not to put up any longer with such
intolerable behavior. After declaring that they were now concluding
their case, the defense attorneys dramatically walked out of the court
room, to the sound of supportive applause from most of those in
attendance.
In a dramatic closing statment to the court, Irving defiantly
declared that this is a political trial, and that the verdict had been
decided long before it began.
He said that he had sent aerial reconnaissance photographs taken
of Auschwitz in 1944 to German historians, asking each one to please
show him where they believed the "gas chambers" were located. "But
each one of them declined," Irving said, adding that German historians
are liars and cowards.
"As a historian," he said, "I have a duty to bring out the truth.
As a judge, you have the same duty. All the same, it appears that in
Germany you have certain difficulties with that."
Irving has said that he will appeal the May 5 verdict, if need be
under the United Nations convention on human rights. Even though he is
a citizen of a fellow European Community country, Irving has officially
been banned from entering Germany. Nevertheless, he has visited
Germany dozens of times since the ban was issued.
In Italy, authorities prevented Irving from landing at the Rome
airport in mid-June because he was scheduled to address a meeting of
the Western Cultural Movement. In spite of the ban, and a violent
protest by Jewish demonstrators who threw stones and paint, about 300
mostly younger people met anyway at the hotel conference site.
Meanwhile, Jewish organizations in Britain are pressuring book
stores not to stock or sell the revised new edition of Irving's 850-
page master work, _Hitler's War_. (Available from the IHR for $49.95,
plus $4.00 shipping.)
Several bookstores have withdrawn the book in the wake of furious
protests and vandal attacks, although other dealers have declared that
they will not give in to threats and intimidation, and will continue to
carry the Revisionist work.
Irving is convinced that the tide of history is with the
Revisionists. "It is going to be a hot twelve months," he recently
told a reporter, "but at the end of it, the gas chamber legend will
have vanished once and for all."
Within two years, he told a meeting in Hamburg last November,
"this myth of mass murders of Jews in the death factories of Auschwitz,
Majdanek and Treblinka, etc., etc., which in fact never took place. . .
this horrific ghost of guilt from which the German people have suffered
for the last 45 years, will be laid to rest."
Irving, author of dozens of best-selling, acclaimed works of
twentieth-century history, will address the Eleventh IHR conference in
October.
[end of first article of three]
___________________________________________________________________________
>From _The Journal of Historical Review_, Vol. 13, Number 2 (Mar./Apr. '93):
Irving Conviction in Germany Upheld, Fine Tripled
Historian Ordered to Pay $18,000 for "Gas Chamber" Remarks
David Irving has been ordered by a German court to pay $30,000 marks (about
$18,000) for telling an audience that the "gas chamber" at Auschwitz shown
to hundreds of thousands of tourists annually is a phony postwar
reconstruction ("Attrappen").
On January 13 a Munich court rejected Irving's appeal of a 1992
conviction, and then tripled the original fine. Last May the best-selling
British historian was ordered to pay 10,000 marks (about $6,000) after a
lower court convicted him of remarks made at a Munich meeting in 1990.
(See the _IHR Newsletter_, July-August 1992, pp. 3-4.)
The appeals court judge in the January case -- like his counterpart in
the May trial -- rejected a bid by Irving's attorneys to introduce
documents, witnesses (including Auschwitz State Museum Curator Dr. Piper)
and other evidence showing that what the historian had said in the 1990
meeting is, in fact, the truth. The judge justified his refusal to permit
the defense to present its case by declaring that the wartime extermination
of the Jews has been sufficiently proved by historians.
Irving attorney Dr. Schaller said that he would appeal this "outrageous"
verdict to the highest possible level, even though he sees little prospect
for success. In spite of the new ruling, Irving defiantly repeated his
view outside the court building: "There were no gas chambers at Auschwitz.
I will not change my opinion."
[end of article]
[Reprinted by permission from _The Journal of Historical Review_, P.O. Box
1306, Torrance, CA 90505, USA. Subscription rate: $40 per year, domestic.
$50 per year, foreign.]
This article was manually transcribed by the System Operator of the
"Banished CPU" computer bulletin board system, which is located in Portland,
Oregon, U.S.A.
Banished CPU supports Freedom of Speech!
___________________________________________________________
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Sysop: Maynard "the Main Nerd"
[end of second article of three]
___________________________________________________________________________
The Video that Justifies Buying a Video Player
New Documentary Video Torpedos Battleship Auschwitz
"Gas Chambers" Suffer Direct Hit
IN THE JULY 1992 _IHR Newsletter_, we told you about historian David
Irving's dramatic trial in Germany. Appealing his conviction (and $4,300
fine) for making public statements denouncing the "gas chambers" at
Auschwitz as phony reconstructions ("Attrappen"), Irving, author of such
international bestselling histories as _Hitler's War_, _The Destruction of
Dresden_, _The Trail of the Fox_, _Goering: A Biography_, _The Rise and
Fall of the Luftwaffe_, and _The War Between the Generals_, not only lost
his appeal but saw his fine raised to $6,000.
Irving's case was impressive, but he still lost because Munich district
court judge Thomas Stelzner refused to let him put Dr. Franciszek Piper,
head curator and director of the Auschwitz State Museum in Poland, on the
witness stand in his behalf.
[Shot from the video, "Cole enters Auschwitz with a ruse -- a Righteous Jew
seeking to discredit the Revisionists back home."]
THIS REMARKABLE VIDEOTAPE SHOWS YOU WHAT JUDGE STELZNER DID NOT WANT THE
WORLD TO SEE. Revisionist David Cole, equipped with a Super VHS video
camera, a microphone, a list of questions, and a sense of humor, traveled
to Auschwitz in September 1992 and produced a video of that trip that you
simply cannot afford to miss. Cole not only uncovers and documents on tape
the blatant falsehoods told Auschwitz visitors every day, year in and year
out by unknowing tour guides, he also shows that the very people who run
the Auschwitz museum aren't at all sure about gas chambers! (You'll be
surprised at what they DO believe, though.)
[Shot from the video, "Auschwitz tour guide Alicia claims matter of factly
that the 'gas chamber' is in its 'unaltered' state."]
Here is dramatic confirmation of what Revisionists have been saying
about the Holocaust for more than 20 years, graphically presented on video
so you can see and hear for yourself the professional Auschwitz tour guides
and the museum's director, and examine the layout of the camp with its
buildings and their surroundings. For those of us who cannot afford the
trip to Europe to see all this for ourselves, this video brings Auschwitz,
as well as _The Leuchter Report_, to life in the comfort of your living
room.
It is one thing to read that the "gas chamber" at Auschwitz stands
outside the perimeter of the camp, and quite another to actually see it.
It may seem remarkable to read that interior walls of the "gas chamber"
have been removed, holes have been added to the ceiling, and that there are
drains in the floor, but it lends a whole new appreciation to see, first
hand, under the relentless eye of the camera, the extensive and obvious
postwar structural alterations and plumbing.
[Shot from the video, "Auschwitz Museum curator Dr. Piper insists that the
'gas chamber' was altered after the war."]
Most devastating of all is Cole's interview with Dr. Piper, head curator
of the Auschwitz State Museum for 26 years, who casually admits to post-war
alterations of the room that for decades has been shown to tourists as an
unaltered, "original state" gas chamber. You won't believe your ears as
this top Auschwitz authority tells Cole of his abiding belief in the human
soap and human-skin lampshade stories even years after they were abandoned
by Holocaust scholars as utterly fictitious.
*** If you've been waiting for a SUPERBLY PRODUCED, HIGHLY PERSUASIVE
*** video that makes the case for Holocaust Revisionism, the wait is over!
This video documentary is so revealing, so powerful, that it has already
been pressed into use by Belgian Revisionists in their appeal against their
conviction in Europe for questioning the Holocaust story. Without a doubt,
it will play an increasingly important role in other such proceedings
around the world.
[Shot from the video, "Inside the 'gas chamber,' Cole points out the
obvious modifications and lack of tell-tale blue stains, proving no wartime
use of deadly Zyklon B gas here."]
The information contained on this tape is so new and so unexpected that
the Holocaust lobby has not yet had time to react. Order your copy now so
that when the fireworks begin you will already have the best seat in the
house.
Even if you've never purchased an IHR video, your investment in this one
will pay dividends for years to come. If you don't have a VHS video
player, beg, buy, or borrow one. Professionally produced with high quality
color video image and crisp sound, this tape runs just under an hour,
making it ideal for airing on your local public access TV station. And if
you've been waiting for a concise, intelligent, and VERY persuasive
presentation on the Holocaust that you can comfortably show to friends and
family -- whether they're hostile to Revisionism, just naive, practically
brain dead, partially convinced, or open-minded enough for a real roller
coaster ride for the intellect -- you need wait no longer, because THAT
VIDEO IS HERE!
[Shot from the video, "Alicia and Cole discuss a wartime aerial
reconaissance photo of Auschwitz: No belching smoke from the chimneys, no
lines of people awaiting gassing."]
DAVID COLE INTERVIEWS Dr. FRANCISZEK PIPER
VHS Color - One Hour Running Time, $49 (European PAL format add $10)
Please add $2.50 for shipping - California residents add 7.75% sales tax
Available from
Institute for Historical Review
P.O. Box 2739 - Newport Beach, CA 92659
A PERSONAL NOTE FROM DAVID COLE...
[Photograph of David Cole]
When I went to Europe in the autumn of 1992 to conduct my own
investigation of the sites of the alleged "gassings" of Jews during World
War Two, two ideas were paramount in my mind.
The first was to record the trip on videotape so that, rather than
bringing back a bunch of boring anecdotes, I would bring back an objective
record of what I found. What I expected to be a great learning experience
for me could be one for others too. My discoveries could become your
discoveries. I would askt he questions that YOU would ask if you were to
make the journey yourself.
The second idea was that I would go as a Jew. No two peoples have
been affected more by the Holocaust story than the Germans and the Jews.
We know how difficult it has been for Germans themselves to expose the
deceptions of the Holocaust Lobby. Germans are FORBIDDEN BY LAW, IN THEIR
OWN COUNTRY, to state publicly that they do not believe in the orthodox
gas-chamber stories! FORBIDDEN from discussing their own history -- a
truly disgusting situation that no lover of freedom should ignore!
Jewish organizations have decided that they MUST have a monopoly on
the Holocaust issue. I reasoned that if I went to Auschwitz as a Jew
rather than as a "revisionist" that I would have a better chance to cut
through the misinformation and lies that so distort what really happened in
the German camps during the war. Perhaps, I thought, if I were to approach
the Auschwitz officials as a Jew, my pointed questions, tactfully put,
would be interpreted not as the debunking questions of a Revisionist, but
rather the sincere questions of a righteous Jew seeking THE REAL FACTS to
answer those back home who say there were no gas chambers. (I remember at
one point standing inside the crematory building, telling the supervisor of
tour guides at Auschwitz that "You MUST tell me the whole truth so that
when I get back home I can speak with authority against those who say 'all
this' never happened.") So, donning my yarmulke, and not letting anybody
in Poland know where my sympathies were, I began my journey.
The result? More than twenty hours of video footage from four camps:
Auschwitz and Majdanek in Poland, Mauthausen in Austria, and Dachau in
Germany. And out of all the footage I brought back with me, nothing is
more significant, or of more VITAL IMPORTANCE, than the interview I
conducted in Poland with Dr. Franciszek Piper of the Auschwitz State
Museum. Dr. Piper has worked at the Museum for 26 years, and he felt
comfortable enough to talk with me for an hour in his office at Auschwitz.
The result should keep people talking for quite some time.
Every revisionist should give himself and herself a little pat on the
back while they watch this tape. This is the official admission that we
have been right about Auschwitz all this time. Sure, it's only one victory
in a war that will involve many more battles, but savor it anyway. You
deserve it!
David Cole
[end of third article of three -- end of message]
-Dan Gannon
--
dgannon@techbook.COM Public Access User --- Not affiliated with TECHbooks
Public Access UNIX and Internet at (503) 220-0636 (1200/2400, N81)
From oneb!nntp.cs.ubc.ca!news.cyberstore.ca!math.ohio-state.edu!darwin.sura.net!udel!news.sprintlink.net!news.world.net!teleport.com!teleport.com!not-for-mail Thu Dec 2 07:57:58 PST 1993
Article: 19741 of soc.history
Path: oneb!nntp.cs.ubc.ca!news.cyberstore.ca!math.ohio-state.edu!darwin.sura.net!udel!news.sprintlink.net!news.world.net!teleport.com!teleport.com!not-for-mail
From: dgannon@teleport.com (Dan Gannon)
Newsgroups: soc.history
Subject: French Government Cracking Down on Revisionist "Thought Criminals"
Date: 29 Nov 1993 21:22:54 -0800
Organization: Teleport - Public Access (503) 220-0636
Lines: 138
Message-ID: <2delbe$ml1@kelly.teleport.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: kelly.teleport.com
>From the _IHR Newsletter_, July/August 1992 (Number 88):
FRENCH GOVERNMENT
CRACKS DOWN ON REVISIONISTS
Official Suppression of Basic Rights
French courts have been busy recently cracking down on dangerous
Revisionist "thought criminals." On April 10, the appeals court in Caen
(Normandy) upheld convictions against Vincent Reynouard, a 23-year-old
chemical engineer, and Remi Pontier, an information engineer, for
distributing leaflets and stickers that question the existence of
extermination gas chambers in Third Reich concentration camps.
The two defendants were convicted on the basis of the Fabius/Gayssot
law of July 1990 that makes it illegal to call into question "crimes
against humanity" as specified by the Nuremberg Tribunal. In practice,
this law applies only to those who call into question alleged crimes
against Jews.
Four organizations of wartime Jewish and non-Jewish deportees had
brought the charges in this case.
Reynouard was given a two-month suspended prison sentence, and Pontier
was given a 15-day suspended prison sentence. More important, the two
were also ordered to pay a total of 6,000 francs (about $1,200) in
damages to the four organizations, and 1,675 fancs in court costs. In
addition, the two will have to pay the possibly considerable cost of
publishing an announcement about the verdict in a major daily
newspaper.
As a result of their legal costs, the two young men are broke and not
able to pay the fines. French law does not permit a third person to pay
a fine on behalf of an accused person. (Contributions to offset legal
defense costs, which are permitted, may be sent to the defendants
in care of the IHR.)
On June 11, a "first instance" court in Caen convicted Reynouard on
two additional violations of the same July 1990 law. He was fined 5,000
francs ($1,000) and given a one-month suspended prison sentence for
distributing a leaflet entitled "In prison for telling the truth." He
was also fined another 5,000 francs and given another one-month
suspended prison sentence for having sent revisionist leaflets to
secondary students.
Reynouard and Pontier intend to carry on the legal struggle, if need
be by appealing the case to the European human rights court in
Strasbourg.
Also on June 11, in a separate case, the same "first instance" court
in Caen convicted two leftist Revisionists: Pierre Guillaume, a
prominent Revisionist writer and publisher, and his colleague
Michael Guillaume. Guillaume, founder and editor of the publishing
firm Editions _La Vielle Taupe_ ("The Old Mole"), was recently forced
to close down his revisionist bookstore in Paris after weeks of attacks
and demonstrations by Jewish protesters.
On June 17, a court in Nice convicted two young men for having put
stickers on a Lycee (secondary school) building that read "Faurisson is
right: Gas chambers = rubbish." Fabrice Robert, a 20-year-old
university history student, was ordered to pay a fine of 10,000 fancs,
and Pierre Gauzere, a 26-year-old automobile worker, was fined 20,000
francs ($ 4,000). In addition, each was ordered to pay a total 10,000
francs to four organizations.
Finally, the "civic rights" of the two young men were suspended for
five years. Among other things, this means that neither can hold any
government job, including teacher or post office employee, or work
in any government-affiliated agency or business.
This is the first time that a French court has taken away a
Revisionist's "civic rights." (This measure, which is known as the
"civic death," was widely applied to "collaborators" in the years just
after the end of the Second World War.)
To appreciate the outrageous nature of these latest French measures,
they must be seen in a larger context. These court-ordered fines and
other punishments would be universally condemned as intolerable
restrictions of free speech and free expression if they involved any
issue other than the Holocaust.
Not a word about any of these latest French blows against civil rights
and free speech has appeared in the American media, which is normally
so quick to sniff out every real or imagined violation of civil rights
in China, Burma and South Africa.
(A report in the Paris daily _Le Monde_ mentioned the convictions of
Robert and Gauzere, but inaccurately reported that they had been forced
to pay one franc (!) to the four associations, and made no mention of
the extraordinary "civic rights" suspension.)
In a related development, the French "State Council" finally decided
in February to deprive Henri Roques of his doctorate, which was based
on his meticulous dissertation on the "confessions" of key Holocaust
"witness" Kurt Gerstein. This is the first time ever that a French
university doctorate has been withdrawn or canceled in this manner.
(The English-language edition of Roques' dissertation, _The
"Confessions" of Kurt Gerstein_, is available from the IHR for $11 plus
$2 shipping.)
On February 26, a Paris Court of Appeal ordered Francois Brigneu and
Roland Gaucher to pay a fine of 76,000 francs ($ 15,200) for having
published in a weekly periodical a 60-word statement by Faurisson
refuting the Holocust gas chamber and extermination story.
On April 30, Philippe Costa, a 31-year-old engineer, and Laurent
Gentel, a 24-year-old law student, appeared in a court in Foutainebleau
(near Paris) for having distributed a leaflet advertising audio
cassettes of a presentation by Faurisson on the gas chamber issue.
Judge Jacqueline Monnet declared that no one would be permitted to even
mention the words "gas chamber" during the trial, which meant that the
defendants could not explain their reason for distributing the leaflet.
Defense attorney Eric Delcroix protested that he had never even heard
of such intolerable behavior by a judge, and refused to continue the
case. The trial is postponed until June 30.
As we go to press, Prof. Robert Faurisson is still awaiting a
decision in his "triple trial" on charges arising from statements made
in an interview in the magazine _Le Choc du Mois._ (See the May 1992
_IHR Newsletter_, pp. 2-3.)
We urge all sincere defenders of free speech to join with the IHR in
condemning these disgraceful new French assaults against basic rights,
as well as the hypocritical Fabius/Gayssot law of July 1990 that
legalizes these repressive measures.
[end of article]
-Dan Gannon
--
dgannon@teleport.com Public Access User --- Not affiliated with TECHbooks
Public Access UNIX and Internet at (503) 220-0636 (1200/2400, N81)

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